1910. 
771 
THE EMPLOYER’S POINT OF VIEW OF THE 
COLLEGE TRAINED FARMER. 
On page 681 is a letter from a student of the State 
Agricultural College, at Amherst, saying that, “I do 
not believe we students in agricultural colleges would 
be at all benefited by a practical course on a farm for 
a year or two,” because he goes on to say that “those 
who elect agriculture and go back to the farm after 
graduation are usually farmers sons, or those who 
have had extensive experience on the farm before 
entering college.” With this opinion I beg to differ 
for the following reason. Farming to-day when pur¬ 
sued as a science is a different business from that still 
carried on on many of our New England farms. A 
year ago I bought some land in a town where there 
was a demand for a market garden. As many of the 
householders have only small tenures of land and 
no vegetable gardens they were glad of an opportun¬ 
ity to buy green peas and other fresh vegetables. 
Realizing this opportunity for starting a market gar¬ 
den or a fruit and vegetable farm, in the early part 
of last Summer I wrote to one of the professors 
at Amherst and asked him if he could tell me of a 
capable man for the place. I said I would like one 
who could come to me early in February, that he 
might have that month for making his plans for the 
Summer and collecting his tools. There 
was plenty of capital for starting the 
farm and a man taking the place would 
be paid good wages at the start and 
have an opportunity of increasing them 
as he improved the land and made it 
yield a fair result. I wished the 25 acres 
with a capital of five thousand dollars 
to be made self-supporting. This seemed 
a fair proposition, and I was strongly 
advised by the professor to whom I had 
written to take a man who had been 
brought up on his father’s farm in 
Massachusetts and then given a short 
course at the college. 
He came to me on the fifteenth of 
March. On the thirtieth of March the 
farm, which had been planted with 
Winter rye and Crimson clover, was 
plowed up. The plowing was' finished 
on the second of April. Then without 
clearing the land of sod and stones he 
began to plant. The result was of 
course the loss of many seeds which 
were so crushed down by the heavy sods 
that they had no chance to grow. 
More than this, he knew nothing of 
the use of frames, and many of his seeds 
were planted in the clayey soil which 
baked down with the sun. Yet the 
man had done good work on his father’s 
farm, where he had grown large quan¬ 
tities of potatoes, corn and cabbages, 
but he had had no experience with the 
grade of work for which the professor 
had recommended him. 
As Amherst is a State agricultural 
college it seems as if its faculty owed 
a certain duty to the public, and should 
not recommend men for work to which 
they have not yet been trained. The 
business of many men is somewhat in¬ 
dependent of their homes. Such is not 
the case with a farmer, and as the man 
had established his wife and little baby 
in my farmhouse I felt reluctant to 
discharge him, though he told me he could not do the 
work for which I had engaged him. The fruit trees 
he felt he could care for, but the vegetables were 
beyond him; he said that the detailed care of the 
different kinds made his head ache. This was on the 
sixteenth of June; his wife had just furnished the 
house and settled herself comfortably there for at 
least the Summer, and with the hope that they would 
stay there. So I wrote to the professor who had so 
strongly recommended this man for the place, told him 
that the man said he coulu not take the care of my 
vegetables, but on account of his wife and baby I 
was reluctant to discharge him. I then asked him 
to send me a man to assist my farmer and take the 
care of the vegetables. To this letter I have had no 
reply, though in the early part of the season, when I 
wrote the professor of the fruit trees the man set out, 
and that I would be glad to have him visit the farm, 
he wrote that he would do so on his first opportunity. 
I know that many people write glowing recommend¬ 
ations for men who they would not take again into 
their employ, and so injure those capable of good 
service as well as the employers. Injurious as this 
practice is, I believe that it is especially blameworthy 
on the part of a professor or head of any State insti¬ 
tution, for he is injuring the public whom he is em¬ 
ployed to serve. Hearing nothing from Amherst and 
THE RURAb NEW-YORKER 
the farmer still feeling that be could not grow vege¬ 
tables, told me of a friend of his whom he thought 
might come and help him. The man came, and an 
immediate change took place upon the farm. He bad 
had no college training, but he asked for books to tell 
him all about the vegetables he was to plant; he v/ished 
at once to visit all the greenhouses in the town thor¬ 
oughly to post himself on what others were doing. 
He took no account of hours, but was up to transplant 
his seedlings before the hot sun would wilt them, and 
worked through the heat of the day to remove the 
heavy sods and stones. 
The story of these two men is not a parallel of 
the servants to who the talents were given, for the 
unprofitable man who buried his talent under sods 
and stones had had more given to him in his college 
training than the man who sowed and multiplied 
his talent, but he had been wrongly recommended for 
work in which he had had no practical training. The 
time has come in New England for the scientific in¬ 
tensive farming for which the French are famous 
and we look to such a college as Amherst to give them 
this training. one of the public. 
DAY OF SIDE LINES AND SMALL THINGS. 
The custom of growing crops on a guarantee that 
an acre will produce a stipulated sum came in handy 
in some of the Southern Michigan counties this year. 
Otherwise the farmers who grow peas for the canning 
plants would have come out of the little end of the horn. 
One of these plants in Berrien County has just closed 
down after a three weeks run. The drought cut the 
crop short, disappointing both the farmers and the 
canning people. The farmers by their contracts were 
guaranteed $8 per acre, and this was the feature that 
saved them from serious loss. Early in June there was 
the best showing for peas that had been seen for several 
seasons, but the protracted dry spell stopped the growth 
of the peas in the pods, they did not fill and both the 
early and the late varieties were short. The peas in 
quality were good. 
The canning people will be able to realize consider¬ 
ably from the pea vine silage to reimburse them from 
the shortage of the crop of canning material. Every 
vestige of this stuff was saved and stored in a huge 
silo on the ground of the plant at Berrien Springs. 
Silage is carried direct to the silo from the 
thrasher and stored. All of it is sold back to 
the farmers, a great portion of it to the dairy¬ 
men, who find in it a good dairy ration. This is a 
different plan from that followed by other canning 
factories. The Wisconsin pea men feed their silage to 
sheep, large flocks of which are brought from the 
western ranges and fitted for the market by the use 
of the feed. At Hoopeston, Ill., a sugar corn plant 
feeds its waste to mules brought in from the farms, 
and made to look sleek and fat from the waste of 
sugar corn. In this way things that were formerly 
considered as wastes or of little value have been made 
to yield a substantial revenue to the farmer and 
handler of farm products. 
This year the pea canners are suffering from another 
disadvantage. In other years the same factory canned 
fruit after it had had a good season on peas, but this year 
the fruit is short. The frost and freezing spell in May 
caught the fruit in blossom, and there is a shortage 
that precludes the possibility of canning operations 
in this line. Largely the farmers of this fertile region 
are turning their attention to by-products. Jack Frost 
in late years has made fruit growing almost hazardous. 
The farmers must have something to fall back on, and 
many of them are taking to crops that guarantee them 
against loss. The day for many of the soil tillers has 
been saved by an increase of the variety of crops. Scores 
of the Michigan farmers make money from vinegar. 
At Benton Harbor the Graham and Morton boats in 
large part are loaded with barrels filled with the Mich¬ 
igan product, every ounce of which is marketed in 
Chicago. Many of the farmers are growing mint, 
saving the oil until the market warrants a sale. Hun¬ 
dreds of other farmers take Summer boarders, raising 
such crops as many be consumed on 
their own tables, and collecting the 
proceeds of their own houses, thus 
saving package, hauling, freight and 
commission charges. Scores of Michi¬ 
gan farmers with small acreage are 
farming on this plan. j. l. graff. 
Illinois. 
COMPOSTS TO KILL WEED SEEDS 
It might be possible to use certain 
chemicals for the destruction of weed 
seeds in barnyard manures which would 
not be injurious to the manure product 
or to its future use. This, however, 
needs, I believe, more careful trial than 
it has been given heretofore. My own 
personal belief is that a uniform method 
of composting manure is very much pre¬ 
ferable to any chemical treatment. 
Manure taken from stables is hardly fit 
to place upon any land until it has 
been composted. I am strongly op¬ 
posed to the use of the manure spreader 
directly from the stables in any case for 
the following reasons: First, it car¬ 
ries more weed seeds to the field than 
the average method of soil culture can 
destroy. Second, it carries all of the 
crop diseases which wheat straw, grass 
or other cereal grasses may be heir to, 
just in proportion as diseased straw is 
used for litter or bedding. My experi¬ 
ments have demonstrated that a three- 
year compost heap, properly made by 
hauling manure from the barnyard each 
day, results in the destruction of such 
disease-producing fungi as the root rots 
of wheat and the wilt of flax. Such 
compost also destroys all ordinary weed 
seeds and the manure is in the best pos¬ 
sible condition for use on the land. A 
proper method of composting would 
mean the formation of a cement basin 
and drain cistern to save the liquids. 
The manure should be hauled out from 
the stables each day, driving the dump cart directly 
over the pile and keeping it thoroughly compact. The pile 
should thus be made somewhat wider than the cart and as 
long as necessary. The dumping can readily be con¬ 
tinued until the pile is six to 10 feet high; at least six 
feet is desirable. When the compost is ready to be 
used the manure spreader can be brought into action 
with little damage provided the outside of the compost 
heap is scraped off and deposited in a new compost 
heap. The object of driving over pile each day is to 
prevent firefang or burning by compacting the manure. 
N. Dakota Exp. Station. h. l. bolley. 
“Would it not be in the interest of the square deal for 
The It. N.-Y. to publish the fact that the Bureau of Ani¬ 
mal Industry at Washington, D. C., publishes and sells at 
15 cents Bulletin No. 68 on ‘The Milch Goat?’ Private 
parties have garbled a small portion only of the informa¬ 
tion, illustrations, etc., that it contains, and are advertis¬ 
ing the same at a much higher figure,” says a New York 
subscriber. 
Remember that we want your experience with lime- 
sulphur as a Summer spray. The strong point about The 
R. N.-Y. Is that its readers test things and are able to 
give fair reports. We think lime-sulphur or some com¬ 
bination of sulphur will finally take the place of Bor¬ 
deaux, but evidently many experiments must be made to 
learn how to use the solution and what strength to apply. 
Many of our readers must depend on their fruit for bread 
and butter, and their testimony is what we want. 
A SILO FOR PEA VINES IN MICHIGAN. Fig. 329. 
ORPHAN LAMBS AND THEIR NURSES. Fig. 330. 
